Midjourney Version Flags (--v and --niji): The 2026 Reference

TL;DR: Midjourney's version parameter is --v (or --version), and its anime sibling is --niji. As of 26 August 2026 the default model is V8.2, which shipped on 24 July 2026. V8.0 is retired and no longer renders. V6, V6.1, V7, V8.1, V8.2 and Niji 4 through 7 all still run.

What is the Midjourney version parameter?

The Midjourney version parameter is --v, written at the end of a prompt, followed by a version number. --version is the long form and does exactly the same thing. --niji is a separate flag that selects the anime-tuned model family instead.

Three formatting rules from Midjourney's own Parameter List, and all three are easy to break:

1. Parameters go after all your prompt text, never in the middle.
2. There must be a space before the double dash. poppies--ar 2:3 fails.
3. No punctuation inside a parameter. A trailing comma kills it.

That is the whole syntax. The hard part is not typing the flag. The hard part is knowing which numbers are still valid, and which of your other parameters survive the switch.

Which Midjourney versions still work in 2026?

All of them except V8.0. Midjourney has only ever withdrawn one model, and it was an alpha.

Two entries in that table deserve more than a row.

V8.0 is the only genuinely dead version. Midjourney's Version article states that it launched on 17 March 2026 as an early access alpha, stayed available on the Midjourney Alpha website until 24 July 2026, and is no longer available for use. Images you already made in V8.0 stay in your gallery. You cannot generate new ones. The V8.1 launch post from 14 April 2026 telegraphed this in advance: "It is likely that we will decommission our V8.0 model after V8.1 has been out for a few weeks."

V6.1 does more work than its version number suggests. It lost the default slot in June 2025, but Midjourney's Pan, Zoom Out and Editor articles all say the same thing: on V7 and V8, those tools still run on V6.1. So a V8.2 image that you pan, zoom or inpaint gets finished by a two-year-old model. That is not a criticism. It is a detail that explains why edited regions sometimes look subtly different from the rest of the frame.

What changed in each Midjourney version?

Short answers, in reverse order, from Midjourney's release posts.

V8.2 (24 July 2026). An aesthetics and personalization update rather than a new architecture. Midjourney's launch post promises images that are "more creative, bold, sophisticated, edgy and fresh", a sharp reduction in random low-quality outputs, and a Personalization system that reads your taste better, especially on profiles with many ratings. Building a new personalization profile for V8.2 also draws from a larger image pool.

V8.1 (14 April 2026). The speed release. Midjourney's help centre calls it the fastest model so far, with standard jobs rendering roughly four to five times quicker than earlier versions, plus better prompt adherence and detail retention. The launch post claims four seconds per SD image and twelve seconds in HD. V8.1 also brought image prompts and image weights back after V8.0 shipped without them, added a Prompt Shortener that kicks in when you exceed the length limit, and updated Describe to produce longer prompts matching V8 style.

V8.0 (17 March 2026, retired). The alpha. It shipped with --chaos, --weird, --exp, --raw, a new --hd mode rendering natively at 2K, and a --q 4 setting. Text rendering improved when you put words in quotes. Relax mode was missing at launch and arrived four days later.

V7 (3 April 2025). Better text and image prompt handling, richer textures, better bodies and hands. V7 introduced Draft Mode and Omni Reference, and it remains the only model that runs --oref.

V6.1 (30 July 2024). More coherent images, finer detail and texture, about 25% faster than V6.

V6 (20 December 2023). Better prompt accuracy on long inputs, improved coherence and world knowledge, stronger image prompting and remixing. It is also the last version with the full old-school parameter set intact.

V5.2, V5.1, V5 (2023). Progressively sharper and more photographic. V5.1 introduced the stronger default aesthetic that made short prompts viable, and it is the earliest version where --raw is supported.

V4 and earlier. V4 was a full architecture rebuild with --style 4a, 4b and 4c flavours. V3 and below are abstract and painterly with low coherence, kept alive mostly for people chasing that specific look.

If you are still working from a V7-era prompt library, the practical migration question is less "which version" and more "which of my parameters survived". Our Midjourney v7 prompt examples still work as prompt text on V8.2. It is the flags on the end that need auditing.

Which parameters work in which Midjourney version?

This is the table people actually come for. It reproduces the Feature Compatibility chart from Midjourney's Version article as of 24 July 2026, restructured around parameters.

Four rows in there will break an existing workflow.

--q is gone on V8. The Quality help article still explains --q 1, --q 2 and --q 4, but its examples are all V7, and the compatibility chart marks the parameter unsupported on V8.1 and V8.2. V8.0 shipped with --q 4; V8.1 dropped it.

--cref never made it past V6. Character Reference works on Midjourney V6 and Niji 6, and nowhere newer. --cw goes with it, running from 0 (face only) to the default 100 (face, hair and clothing).

--oref only exists on V7. Omni Reference replaced --cref for V7, takes exactly one image, and --ow accepts 1 to 1,000 with a default of 100. Here is the part that catches people: adding an Omni Reference image on the web automatically runs the prompt in V7, whatever your default version says. The June 2026 default-switch post confirmed it directly, noting that V7 omni-reference remains available while the V8 replacement finishes training. If you need a face to survive across images, read character consistency with --cref and --oref before you pick a version.

Multi-prompting stopped at 6.1. Midjourney's Multi-Prompts article lists supported versions explicitly: 1, 2, 3, 4, Niji 4, 5, Niji 5, 6, Niji 6 and 6.1. The :: separator and its numeric weights, including negative weights, are a V6-and-earlier technique. On V8.2 you write the emphasis into the sentence instead.

One near-miss worth flagging: --raw and --style raw are not the same string. The current parameter is --raw, compatible with V5.1 and later. --style raw survives only in the Legacy Features compatibility table, scoped to V5 and V6. We covered that split in does --style raw still work in Midjourney.

What does --niji do, and which Niji versions exist?

--niji switches to a separate model family, built with Spellbrush, tuned for anime and Eastern illustration. It has its own website and Discord. Four numbered versions exist.

Niji 7 (9 January 2026) is current. Midjourney's own launch note lists improved anime coherence, prompt understanding, text rendering and style reference performance. The longer Niji blog post is more candid about the trade: the model is more literal, so loose vibes-based prompts that worked on Niji 6 may underperform, and the aesthetic is deliberately cleaner and flatter to show off the linework.

Niji 7 also dropped a feature, and said so plainly. From the Niji 7 launch post: "You'll notice one important feature missing from the lineup: cref. That one won't be supported by niji 7." Backwards compatibility covered most other flags, including --sv 4.

Niji 6 (7 June 2024) improved Japanese kana rendering, handled simple Chinese characters, and sharpened anime eye structure. It is the newest Niji that accepts --cref.

Niji 5 (April 2023) carries four style flavours: --style cute, --style expressive, --style original and --style scenic. Those strings exist nowhere else.

Niji 4 (20 December 2022) was the first Niji model.

The compatibility chart pairs Niji versions to Midjourney versions: V6 sits alongside --niji 6, V7 alongside --niji 7, and the V8 column has no Niji companion at all. There is no Niji 8. If you want the fuller anime-versus-photoreal decision, Niji vs Midjourney walks through when each family wins.

Where do Midjourney's own docs contradict each other?

Four live contradictions, each dated. Treat these as open questions, not settled facts.

1. Which version is default. The Version article, updated 24 July 2026, says V8.2. The Legacy Features article, updated 9 July 2026, closes with "For information on the current default version (V7), please visit our Version article." Two pages, fifteen days apart, naming different defaults. V8.2 is almost certainly right, since the announcement blog agrees, but the stale line is still on the site.

2. When V8.1 became default. The Version article says V8.1 was default "from June 10 to July 23, 2026". The announcement post titled "V8.1 is now the default model on Midjourney!" is dated 11 June 2026. One day apart, and no way to reconcile them from outside.

3. Whether HD is default. The V8.1 launch post says HD became "3x faster and 3x cheaper. It's so cheap we're making it default for V8.1." The Version help article describes HD as a toggle you enable in settings or with --hd, costing 1.3 minutes of GPU time against 0.8 for SD. The 21 August 2026 changelog then lists fixes for "HD selection on V8.2" and notes that Vary "now respects your settings instead of quietly running in HD". Three sources, three implied defaults. Set --sd or --hd explicitly.

4. Whether Draft Mode works on V8. The Version article's compatibility chart marks Draft Mode as unsupported on V8.1 and V8.2. The Draft and Conversational Modes article, updated three days later on 27 July 2026, says Draft mode is compatible with versions 7 and 8.1 and then devotes a whole section to "Draft Mode in V8.1 / V8.2", describing 24-image batches at 512px for 0.4 minutes of GPU time. A separate announcement from 16 June 2026 launched Draft mode for V8.1. The chart is the outlier. Draft mode works on V8.

There is a fifth, smaller one for completists: the Legacy Features page says V5.1 was "released on May 4th, 2023" and was "the default model from May 3, 2023". A model that became default the day before it launched is a typo, not a mystery, but it tells you how much of that page is hand-maintained.

How do I set a default version instead of typing --v every time?

Three ways, all documented.

On the web, open the settings panel from the Imagine bar and pick a version. It applies to every future prompt until you change it. On Discord, run /settings and choose from the version dropdown. Web and Discord settings are synced, so changing one changes the other.

A per-prompt override always wins. If your default is V8.2 and you append --v 6, that prompt runs on V6.

A custom suffix automates the boring part. In Discord, /prefer suffix appends a fixed string to every prompt you send. Parameters must come last in the suffix.

/prefer suffix --v 8.2 --raw --ar 3:2

Copy-paste: test one prompt across versions

Midjourney's Permutations feature accepts a set inside a version parameter, which is the fastest way to see what a model change actually does to your image. Its own documentation uses a red bird --v {4, 5, 6.1} as the worked example.

Swap in the versions you care about:

a weathered brass diving helmet resting on wet stone, single window light, shallow depth of field --ar 3:2 --v {6, 7, 8.2}

Anime side, same idea:

a swordswoman on a rain-soaked rooftop at dusk, neon reflections, cinematic composition --ar 16:9 --niji {6, 7}

And a V8-only comparison, isolating stylize so you can see how much of the V8.2 look is the model versus the styling system:

industrial ceramic teapot on a concrete plinth, overcast daylight --ar 1:1 --v 8.2 --raw --s {0, 100, 400, 1000}

One last thing the version flag does not do: it has no effect on video. Midjourney's Video article states that video generations are only compatible with --motion low, --motion high, --raw, --loop, --end and --bs, and that image parameters are stripped automatically when you animate a still. Adding --v 8.2 to a video prompt is a no-op.

Keeping this straight without memorising it

The honest summary is that Midjourney's parameter surface is now version-scoped in a way it was not two years ago. --cref lives on V6, --oref lives on V7, --hd lives on V8, --q died between V8.0 and V8.1, and :: stopped at 6.1. A prompt you saved in early 2025 can run today and silently ignore half its flags.

That is a prompt template problem more than a prompt engineering one. The fix is to store the model version alongside the prompt text, so that six months from now you know which flags that prompt was written against. Prompt Architects keeps image prompts in a library with their parameters intact and lets you build reusable blocks with variables, which is the boring infrastructure that stops this exact drift. It does not generate the image. Midjourney does that. We handle the text you paste into it.

If aspect ratios are the next thing on your list, the Midjourney --ar reference covers the 14:1 ceiling and the HD exception in more depth than the table above.